Convicted journalist writes news article about his own court case

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has been using his blog very actively to defend himself against the current storm of criticism from media the last few weeks, much to the chagrin of the journalists that are after him. Expressen’s Per Svensson can’t hide his disappointment and writes in an article full of war metaphors, that Bildt “uses his blog as a weapon against one of the institutions of the liberal democracy – investigative journalism”. This is obviously a situation that Svensson is not used to, but if journalism can’t compete with the blog of an interviewee, then maybe it’s not the blog that is the problem, but journalism in itself.

A fantastic example that journalism doesn’t need blogs to destroy itself comes today from Dagens Media. One of its reporters, Niclas Rislund, used to work for Expressen. Last year he was fined for posing as a police man. Today the Supreme Court announced that it denies Rislund a new trial. And when Dagens Media writes about the story, Rislund himself is the author of the article in which he refers to himself as “Expressen’s former star reporter Niclas Rislund” (Expressens tidigare stjärnreporter Niclas Rislund).

But it’s not all doom and gloom in mainstream media today. The small Swedish company Primelabs today announced that the South African daily Sunday Times will display links from the blogosphere to its articles using Primelabs’ service Twingly. The two Swedish dailies Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet just recently added Twingly links to their online articles.

Colin Daniels, New Media Strategy Manager at Sunday Times said in a press release:

“Twingly is the most exciting product to hit the Blogsphere since RSS became an established Web technology and I believe its real potential lies in its ability to gain acceptance and link Bloggers and the mainstream media.

We are very excited about integrating Twingly into our future news site and making it an integral part of our online strategy. We believe that this is a big step forward in engaging with our readers and creating ‘link love’ with the small but growing number of Bloggers in Africa. It’s a win-win strategy!”